My laptop finally had it’s last drink gracefully served by Zippy last weekend. It’s dodged many many close calls especially considering it’s spent countless hours behind the DJ booth at the club and late nights partying with friends. I’ve dropped the darn thing from over 3′ countless times and tried to serve it my beer three times that I can recall. Zippy’s accomplished watering the lil monster twice that I can remember. lol.

Any who. Back to the point. It’s finally dead after over a year of abuse so now I switched gears a little bit, at least for a little while to see how it goes. I’m downsizing a ton. Everywhere I actually get work done I have an extra monitor, keyboard and mouse setup with an extra PC utilizing Synergy so I’ve always walked in to work / home and set my laptop down, plugged it in, turned it on and it just extended my the existing PC. On that note I decided to get a little lifestyle-ish laptop. It’s a hell of a lot nicer to carry around and thus far is proving to be an adequate replacement of my full sized laptop. I still have a couple full sized laptops I will use for hotel hopping and getting real work done on the road but for the daily grind I (so far) really like having a ton less baggage.

Now that it’s setup I don’t actually open the little thing when I get to work. I just plug it in or in other words ‘dock it’ on my desktop. It’s got it’s own monitor and automatically links up via synergy and has more than enough power to let me haxor the scripts. I have read a lot ’bout these things being killer portable linux machines. I’m going to toss an ubuntu livecd in it and see how it likes it.

One thing I wish it had (or maybe I’m overlooking) is the ability to instantly come out of standby when you open the lid. I’m jealous of Zippy’s laptop for that albiet her’s is a big tablet but that feature just seems extremely convenient. standby when the laptop lid closes and resume on open. But noooooo.. I still have to reach my grubby finger in there and press the power button.

I didn’t really need to run out and buy this thing since I have extra laptops specifically set aside to replace my last one but I figured it was time to test a change of pace. It definitely will not cut the cake for hotel hopping and getting real work done remotely for an extended period of time but that’s why I have a portable printer, writable optical media, two reams of paper and a 17″ portable workstation (laptop) in the trunk of my car in a small suitcase. It is however fun to buy new toys.

The president has been, for the most part, elected so the average pace around the office is a bit more like Initech from Office Space. During this down time I spend most of my auxiliary time scripting but nobody else in the office seems to fancy that idea so I’m curious to ask the simple office gamers or techs that read my blog what kind of games do you find or do you allow on work computers? I avoid monotonous games like the plague so aside from suggesting everyone go to some well known online game consortium I really don’t know what to suggest. I’m really not a fan of anyone downloading games to their workstations which is why they ask me for them.

And of course everyone is bored with the few simple games I’ve installed in the past.
Gem Drop
Glinx
Text Twist
What Word
Tetris
Letter Linker
MahJong
and of course Solitaire

A quality provider of flash games that doesn’t ultimately lead the user away from the site or force/suggest downloads (ex. for full version) would be slick.

If the copyright stuff wasn’t so questionable I would dig up all my console emulators and ROMS.

Zippy and I have really enjoyed ourselves out in Colorado. It’s one of those awesome getaways that strike you with “Why exactly do we have to go home?”.

We got to hang out with Crystal & Liam.

Check out all kinds of scenery.

Ghost Towns. =)

And we Skied!.. Well, Zippy Skis. I brought my Snowboard, had it refurbished and bought a ton of awesome new gear.

Even this early in the season (they only just now started opening the ski resorts) it’s just perfect out there. The whole Green+Healthy revolution is common place in the Mountains of Colorado. Zippy was really excited and happy to find vegetarian and eclectic delicious meals available everywhere we ate. The first full day I spent above 10,000 feet elevation kind of had me shaking a bit with strange breathing patterns but after a few times down the slopes I was feeling great. We are planning on going back again Late February when my brother gets to take a vacation away from Iraq. I’m dying to go snowboarding with Matt. If everything goes right a couple of our friends might even head out there with us. If Zippy and I don’t move to Colorado at some point (in the mountains of course) then I’m almost positive it will be a getaway destination we visit yearly if not more often.

Zippy is working on sorting through the pics she took to upload them to her flickr Colorado Ski Vacation Set. Here’s my Colorado Ski Vacatino Set.

Yesterday morning I called up the state of Colorado and found out the Mountains are opening! Actually, I called up a few Ski Resorts and it looks like they have enough snow on a few of their mountain tops to open up a few runs and a couple lifts so Zippy and I quickly packed last night and are on our way to the Mountains!

We are going to pick up Crystal, my brothers wife, in Fountain Colorado Saturday morning and all three of us are going to hit the slopes for a day and quite possibly see what kind of night life Denver has to offer in the evening. Zippy and I are going to spend Sunday, Monday & Possibly Tuesday on the slopes as well if not roaming around Colorado gaping at the Mountains. Nothing like a quick 5 day getaway right after 3 months of crazy work.

Once again, We’ll be in my little orange car hauling ass across Kansas and all over Colorado so if you see me, wave damnit!

A little dusty but ready for the snow!

Drum role please.

The unofficial results will begin to roll in shortly. Today has gone pretty darn smooth overall. I’m glad things have gone so well. It looks as if Missouri and Iowa ( I assume most of KS too ) have experienced little to no problems.!.

Note: Keep an eye out for Missouri’s election totals. They close their poles very early and their results have foreshadowed the winner every year for a very long time! Oops…. Missouri was wrong.